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The extent of the recent collapse of cryptocurrency central exchange FTX has become clearer recently with news coming out that hackers stole $415 million worth of crypto from FTX, which is just under a tenth of the assets that the collapsed exchange is trying to recover. FTX collapsed in November after a sell-off in its native FTT token triggered a solvency crisis.
FTX lawyers and advisors have tracked down around $5.5 billion worth of liquid assets to be recovered, made up of $3.5 billion in crypto, $1.7 billion in cash, and $300 million in tradable assets like stocks and bonds. Lawyers are now working to track down assets that could be sold to help FTX to repay its debtors, including customers who lost funds when the exchange collapsed. In addition to the exchange's crypto and cash holdings, they identified $253 million worth of real estate in the Bahamas as potential assets for recovery in Tuesday's presentation.
However, according to FTX’s acting CEO John Ray, $415 million of the assets for recovery were lost in crypto hacks. The report for Markets Insider states that hackers stole $323 million from the Bahamas-based parent company FTX.com, $90 million from FTX, and $2 million from sister trading firm Alameda Research.
FTX’s former CEO Sam Bankman Fried paints a different picture, however, saying that FTX US is completely solvent. Writing in his Substack Newsletter the disgraced former CEO who is currently under house arrest and charged with eight financial crimes that are linked to the FTX collapse said:
“These claims by S&C are wrong and contradicted by data later on in the same document […] FTX US was and is solvent, likely with hundreds of millions of dollars in excess of customer balances.”
Bankman-Fired has hired a legal team to represent his interests in the FTX bankruptcy investigation
The cryptocurrency markets have been reeling since the FTX collapse although they didn’t crash as hard as some analysts were predicting at the time. However, the market sentiment for cryptocurrency remains weak with high volatility expected in the weeks and months ahead.
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